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Turning stem cells into human eggs

conception.bio

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Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#21

Post by gjsman-1000 »

skulk wrote: post #16
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

No Ethics personnel on the team?

How much does ethics even matter in this specific case? If they develop this technology and use it in a "maximally ethical" way, whatever that is, what is stopping the next person to get their hands on it from using it unethically? It seems to me that the ethics question was "Should we have this technology at all?" and not "What do we do with it?" and it's already been answered.

I agree with you completely - I was just trying to make the point that they claim to care about ethics and yet have no ethicists from what it appears.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#22

Post by HPsquared »

willmorrison wrote: post #14
jschwartzi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand. Are you saying there’s some negative impact to allowing people to have children who otherwise couldn’t? What problems do you foresee?

I commented above a few of the issues I see. For example, would Lebron James (or any celebrity or person that has genetics that are profitable) be afraid of giving blood for fear of someone making Lebron 2.0 without his permission?

Or, literally some kind of false paternity fraud - such a child would come with certain legal rights and privileges.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#23

Post by dang »

sdhfjg wrote: post #20
danuker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We want to help parents have kids when it otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Sounds to me like those eggs are bound to become mature individuals.

I could have been more clear, the distinction is semantic. I was referring to culling/sterilization to prevent reproduction in the sexually mature. Unborn persons are not adults, even if they will be.

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#24

Post by idorosen »

Millions of same-sex couples may benefit from this research in the future if it helps make it possible for them to conceive (directly biologically related) children.

EDIT: Oh gosh, it's right there in TFA, that's what I get for skimming instead of reading deeply. All I saw were comments on the ethical implications of the biology work when I commented.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#25

Post by throwaway482423 »

mcculley wrote: post #15
jschwartzi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand. Are you saying there’s some negative impact to allowing people to have children who otherwise couldn’t? What problems do you foresee?

Once humans (and other animals) can be created without parents being involved, there will be many ethical issues. At what point do they attain human rights? At conception? At "birth" from an artificial womb? What defines "human" in "human rights"? (Can they knock out a few genes and make a sentient creature that is capable of suffering but not human? We have sentient non-humans suffering in factory farms already.) Ho…

>At what point do they attain human rights? At conception? At "birth" from an artificial womb?

This is hardly a new issue

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#26

Post by mcculley »

throwaway482423 wrote: post #25
mcculley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once humans (and other animals) can be created without parents being involved, there will be many ethical issues. At what point do they attain human rights? At conception? At "birth" from an artificial womb? What defines "human" in "human rights"? (Can they knock out a few genes and make a sentient creature that is capable of suffering but not human? We have sentient non-humans suffering in factory farms already.) Ho…

>At what point do they attain human rights? At conception? At "birth" from an artificial womb? This is hardly a new issue

The issue is currently limited to pregnant women.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#28

Post by ravitation »

From the MIT Technology Review article...

>Some researchers sensed that the young entrepreneurs were in over their heads. The science of in vitro gametogenesis is dominated by a small cadre of university research groups who’ve been working on the problem for years. “When I talked to them, they had no clue, absolutely no clue, how to start a project,” says Albertini. “They were asking me what kind of equipment to buy. It was ‘How would you know if you made an egg? What would it look like?’”

To be honest, this was my first thought. I don't work directly in the field, but in a tangentially related field at an R1 research university, and I read through their research team and definitely got the sense that they were... certainly ambitious.

Obviously, I'm always in favor of more research in transformative technologies, in mostly whatever form that takes; but I do wonder about venture capital as the model for this type of research specifically.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#29

Post by pishpash »

idorosen wrote: post #24

Millions of same-sex couples may benefit from this research in the future if it helps make it possible for them to conceive (directly biologically related) children. EDIT: Oh gosh, it's right there in TFA, that's what I get for skimming instead of reading deeply. All I saw were comments on the ethical implications of the biology work when I commented.

That's explicitly mentioned at least two times in the article as a primary motive of the founder.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#30

Post by BurningFrog »

kevinpet wrote: post #4
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

No Ethics personnel on the team?

Let me help you out with my automated bioethics bot. val bioethics = function(proposal) { return "That's unethical"; }

My current level of cynicisms says that if you make someone a gatekeeper, they will use that power.

At minimum, to justify their salary.

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